Modern software development is evolving away from the client-server model toward network-based processing systems that provide access to data and services via the Internet or other networks. In contrast to traditional systems that host networked applications on dedicated server hardware, a “cloud” computing model allows applications to be provided over the network “as a service” supplied by an infrastructure provider. The infrastructure provider typically abstracts the underlying hardware and other resources used to deliver a customer-developed application so that the customer no longer needs to operate and support dedicated server hardware. The cloud computing model can often provide substantial cost savings to the customer over the life of the application because the customer no longer needs to provide dedicated network infrastructure, electrical and temperature controls, physical security and other logistics in support of dedicated server hardware.
Multi-tenant cloud-based architectures have been developed to improve collaboration, integration, and community-based cooperation between customer tenants without sacrificing data security. Generally speaking, multi-tenancy refers to a system wherein a single hardware and software platform simultaneously supports multiple user groups (also referred to as “organizations” or “tenants”) from a common data store. The multi-tenant design provides a number of advantages over conventional server virtualization systems. First, the multi-tenant platform operator can often make improvements to the platform based upon collective information from the entire tenant community. Additionally, because all users in the multi-tenant environment execute applications within a common processing space, it is relatively easy to grant or deny access to specific sets of data for any user within the multi-tenant platform, thereby improving collaboration and integration between applications and the data managed by the various applications. The multi-tenant architecture therefore allows convenient and cost effective sharing of similar application features between multiple sets of users.
Certain operations that are common or routinely executed in a traditional database environment may be difficult or impractical to execute in a multi-tenant database architecture. For example, a standard “Truncate” operation cannot be effectively utilized in a multi-tenant database architecture where database objects for different tenants are maintained in a common table. Consequently, it may require a significant amount of time to physically delete a large amount of data from a database object maintained in a multi-tenant database system. For example, it may require hours or days of system time to physically delete a large database object that includes millions of rows of data, due to the nature of the multi-tenant environment, limitations of a database management application, or the like. For various reasons, database users would prefer to have deleted data removed from a database object as quickly as possible. One possible workaround for this scenario is to drop and recreate a custom object. Unfortunately, this workaround is not ideal because the user must rework any associated applications and customizations to refer to the new custom object.